They're in the car seat . . . do you know if your children are safe?

It's among the first thing new parents learn about all their careful preparations to bring home the newborn: how to install the car seat, and sometimes, how not to.

In Paxton, Patrolman Mark Savasta can now tell you all about it, and help with installation.

Like new parents, Savasta found out in his weeklong training for certification that it's not as easy as you think.

"It was really intense training, more than you'd expect," he says. "It's incredible the amount of things that you have to know, like whether they meet safety standards, or the makeup of seatbelts, the makeup of seatbelt components, weight limits. There was lots of hands-on training."

A great deal of what makes correctly installing child safety seats so difficult is the variation: there are infant seats, toddler seats, booster seats, seats that can fit all three with some alteration. Add to the variation the differences in cars, and the difficulty increases.

Savasta's certification now qualifies him to inspect car seat installations for residents, something he says is, again, not as quick and simple as you'd think. He recommends making an appointment for the inspection, which will involve removing the car seat, checking all the components, checking that the car seat hasn't been recalled, and reinstalling it.

Though Savasta doesn't recommend any one type of car seat over another, the agency that trained Savasta, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (www.nhtsa.dot.gov), does have recommendations on its web site, and a great deal of other information as well. The site includes information on recalls and general safety standards, where to get the seat inspected, ease of use ratings, and many other sites or links of use to parents who want to avoid becoming a statistic: more than 72% of child restraint systems observed in a 2005 NHTSA study had critical misuses, mostly of belt fitting.

In Paxton, anyone can find out how to avoid that, and how to make the most of the safety of their car seat.

Parents might be surprised, as Savasta was, to learn that seats have a shelf life of six years; don't buy one at a yard sale or expect to use your seven-year-old's seat for the new baby. Facing backward in the center of the back seat is the best position, although many parents don't keep that up any longer than necessary, but they should do it as long as possible, says Savasta.

While choosing a seat is an individual preference, installing it involves the hard work of reading two manuals: your car's and the car seat's.